Sugar finished mostly higher on Thursday, as a large vessel line-up to load the sweetener in top producer Brazil caused port congestion. Chart-based buying pushed arabica coffee futures closer toward last month's 12-year peak. In cocoa, dealers focused on expectations of a huge delivery after expiry of the July contract on Thursday.
At expiry, the contract's premium to September approached a massive 300 pounds a tonne, while its open interest at Wednesday's close remained high at 24,866 lots, equivalent to 248,660 tonnes of cocoa, Liffe reported. Dealers said as much as 230,000 tonnes could be delivered against the contract, representing the bulk of available graded cocoa and significantly higher than the around 50,000 tonnes tendered against the July 2009 contract.
ICE September cocoa settled down $9 at $3,144 per tonne as the market consolidated after Wednesday's rally. ICE October raw sugar closed up 0.42 cent at 17.39 cents a lb. "The market is getting a little bit overbought," said Sterling Smith, an analyst for brokers Country Hedging Inc in Minnesota. Arabica futures jumped on technical and fund buying amid Brazilian producer selling, taking them closer to last month's 12-year top at $1.7650 per lb. ICE September arabicas closed up 2.20 cents or 1.3 percent at $1.6710 a lb.
Comments
Comments are closed.